Richmond

Since Bob's teaching in Twickenham all this week, we decided to meet after school in nearby Richmond to try out another one of the online guided walks that served us so well in the East End this past weekend. We might have even enjoyed today's walk more than the first one, probably because we'd already done some of our own exploring in Richmond, and today's route was still mostly new to us. As a result, we now have a much better sense of the area than we got wandering on our own. The first photo of today's 6.5 km walk is of the site of George Eliot's home from 1856-1859--in fact, the place where Mary Ann Evans lived when she first published under the name George Eliot:

Unfortunately, the current government building bears no relation to this literary past, and we might have easily missed the plaque if we didn't know to look for it!

The Richmond Theatre building is much prettier, dating from 1899,
and I liked the slightly creepy decoration outside this nearby eyeglasses shop:
This building, Old Palace Place, dates back to 1688,
and when I Googled it to see if I could find out anything else about the building, I came across a page that listed the last time the building was sold, in 2002--for £1.6 million. Ack! Well, for that amount of cash, you know the neighbourhood's nice, and nearby Richmond Green is certainly as tranquil as the rest of the area:

Houses on this interestingly named street
were built in 1724 for close servants ("maid of honour" meant something different back then) of Caroline of Anspach, Princess of Wales (wife of the future George II). They're just a little bit nice: This archway marks the entrance to the site where Richmond Palace stood:
(The small blue plaque to the right of the entrance notes that King Henry VII, King Henry VIII, and Queen Elizabeth I all had residences here.) The courtyard through the archway is full of beautiful homes, with a few remaining buildings from the palace's time, like Trumpeter's House:
Apparently, the other side of Trumpeter's House faces the Thames and has a spectacular garden--we saw a sign on the entrance to the gardens advertising a garden party this Sunday afternoon, if any of you are so inclined! We left Old Palace Yard and made our way down to the Thames, which is mighty pretty along this stretch:
The railway bridge
dates back to 1848 and the noise of trains rushing by provided one hint that although Richmond is almost shockingly pastoral in places,
it's still part of the urban sprawl of London. (Another constant reminder is the sound of planes rushing overhead on their way to and from nearby Heathrow Airport. It's much noisier than you may think!) We walked over Richmond Lock
and down along the Thames for a while.
Here's one of the many planes we saw overhead. (I wasn't trying to get a photo of a plane; it just happened to be in the shot!) This row of garages appeared to serve as storage space, with the exception of one garage that had been converted into a pottery studio, and it wasn't until we walked past that I noticed that there was a woman inside, working away, enjoying her view of the river, which happened to include this heron, perched almost directly across from her window.

Richmond Bridge, finished in 1777, is the oldest bridge across the Thames:
We left the riverside, and began a slow walk uphill, through the beautiful Terrace Gardens,
finally reaching the top of Richmond Hill, where the view was much less hazy than the last time we were here.
In spite of such grand views, my favourite part of the walk was the last part, when we strolled down small streets, alleyways, and turned around in cul-de-sacs. Lancaster Park was especially cosy
and we walked past many almshouses, which were as idyllic as ever. At this particular set from 1858,

an elderly resident doing her gardening saw us standing at the gate, looking in, and started talking to us. We found out that she had only moved in at the beginning of the year ("Oh, but I was on a waiting list for a very long time before I got in!" she said), that you had to be a Richmond resident to get on the waiting list, and that she paid "maintenance" to live there--which I guess is the same thing as rent, but with a different name. She talked about getting older and how when she moved, she knew she had to embrace the change and this next round of ageing. I said that we should all be as lucky in our old age, with an almshouse in Richmond and doing our gardening on a warm, sunny day. She burst out laughing, and through her huge smile, said, "I guess you're right, dear!" Next were these almshouses, founded in 1661 and rebuilt in 1851 (note the subtle reminder over the gate: "I will pay the vows which I made to God in my trouble").
We got a bit lost on the last part of the walk, and as we stood looking for the "alleys" that the guide instructed us toward, a man who was rushing up behind us remarked, "You look like you need some help," and when we said we were looking for the alleys that lead to "The Alberts," he said, "Ahhh, you're looking to buy a house or a flat, aren't you?" When Bob said we were just going for a walk, I think the man thought we were a bit crazy. Nevertheless, he pointed us in the right direction, and even led us to the streets known as The Alberts, summing them up this way: "Simple workers' cottages--as was; bijou yuppie residences--as is." ("Who talks like that?" Bob wondered afterwards.) As the man continued rushing along, he yelled behind him, "You're Canadians?" and, as we do when people say that, we congratulated him on identifying our accents. "Less harsh than American accents," he said, waved goodbye, and disappeared down the street. The Alberts were indeed filled with lovely, quainter-than-quaint small cottages:
I took this next photo for the cute houses, yes, but mainly for the parking regulations. Notice that all the cars on the left side of the street are parked with one set of tires up on the sidewalk, and, more strikingly, that the borough has actually sprayed parking markings up on the sidewalk as well!
In spite of the simple logic of this behaviour (although I wondered how wheelchair users would be able to use the sidewalk), this would never be allowed in Canada. Although we see cars parked this way all the time throughout London, this is the first time that we've noticed it being officially sanctioned by the local council, rather than being an agreed upon "look-the-other-way" activity in which motorists and parking officials coexist. (Seoul is still one up in terms of parking strangeness though, with parking being so impossible in some areas that people double-, triple-, even quadruple-park, usually bumper-to-bumper, and leave the parking brake off and the gear in neutral when they leave. The deal is that when you come back to your completely sandwiched-in vehicle, you (or, rather, certain members of your family visiting from Canada, ahem . . .) push the one or two or three cars behind you back just enough so that you can get your car out. This means that people are constantly pushing each other's cars around and that you may find your car in a slightly different spot upon your return, but amazingly, people don't take mischievous advantage of this to really move the cars around. Once in a while, someone forgets to leave the car in neutral and then tempers can REALLY flare, but most of the time it works very well.) Um, but where was I? Oh yes, Richmond . . . just before we finished our walk, I noticed this pleasing assortment of objects in a window

and the last set of almshouses we saw
are also Richmond's oldest, from 1758. On that note, we returned to Richmond station and began our long journey home, refreshed from our afternoon in "the country."